Few people remember the short-lived 1926 musical Betsy anymore, although its music and lyrics came from powerhouse songwriting duo Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. There’s a reason few people remember it: Rodgers and Hart had written nothing memorable for it. (A Hart-related site calls it “a beautifully mounted mess, top-heavy with ensemble numbers in the Ziegfeld fashion.” Among those numbers, for instance, was a performance by someone called the Harmonica Symphony Orchestra. Umm, okay.)
Few people remember its star, either, one Belle Baker. (That’s her over at the right.) But at the time, she was enough of a force that when she didn’t care for the music, she could simply ignore the show’s — and the show-business — realities… and, in Act 2 on opening night, just start singing a song which Rodgers and Hart themselves hadn’t written. To say they were surprised probably understates the case. [*]
The surprise was “Blue Skies,” written by Baker’s friend Irving Berlin. Apparently he’d been kicking it around in his head for some time, just hadn’t had the proper occasion to commit it to permanent form. Baker’s complaints about her solos in the show gave him that occasion.
It was an immediate hit. Reportedly, the audience on that opening night so loved the song that they required twenty-four encores of it. For her part, Baker was delighted but also a little unnerved; says Wikipedia (alas, without attribution for the moment):
During the final repetition, Ms. Baker forgot her lyrics, prompting Berlin to sing them from his seat in the front row.
I bet that moment really tickled Rodgers and Hart!
What really triggered this week’s Midweek Music Break entry was a sentimental request from a RAMH regular, hoping I could include Willie Nelson’s popular version of the song from 1978. (Lyrics below, as always.)
[Below, click Play button to begin Blue Skies (Willie Nelson). While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:36 long.]
Lyrics:
Blue Skies
(by Irving Berlin; performance by Willie Nelson)Blue skies smilin’ at me
Nothin’ but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin’ a song
Nothin’ but blue skies from now onI never saw the sun shinin’ so bright
Never saw things goin’ so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you’re in love, my how they flyBlue days, all of them gone
Nothin’ but blue skies from now on[instrumental break]
Blue skies smilin’ at me
Nothin’ but blue skies do I see
Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin’ but blue skies from now onBlue skies smilin’ at me
Nothin’ but blue skies do I see
Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin’ but blue skies from now onBlue skies smilin’ at me
Nothin’ but blue skies do I see
Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin’ but blue skies from now on
“Blue Skies” has been covered by many, many other artists since that first twenty-five-times introduction. One of the classic renditions comes from Ella Fitzgerald in 1958, on her Very Best of the Irving Berlin Songbook album. Says the Jazz Standards site:
After a subtle rubato introduction, Fitzgerald offers up a hard-swinging interpretation of the melody followed by a truly stunning scat solo.
[Below, Blue Skies (Ella Fitzgerald). This clip is 3:43 long.]
(That scat solo starts about 1:10 or so into the recording, and takes up about two-thirds of its entire length. :))
My own favorite version of “Blue Skies” (maybe unsurprisingly) is the brassy instrumental from Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. As I understand it, this immediately followed the intermission that night; if so, it seems a brilliant assertion (perhaps to themselves, as much as the audience) of the orchestra’s confidence: We’re really doing this, people!:
[Below, Blue Skies (Benny Goodman). This clip is 3:18 long.]
___________________________________
* Much though I love this story of the surprise sprung on Messrs. Rodgers and Hart, I’ve come to doubt that it was quite the last-minute stunner. At the least, I wondered: Wouldn’t Belle Baker at least have told the orchestra about the switch???
[back]
Froog says
I keep getting a ‘File not found’ message for Willie’s version.
Is it just me, or does Ella throw in a snatch of You Won’t Be Satisfied Until You Break My Heart in her scatting?
These records for encores and curtain calls always baffle comprehension rather, don’t they? Surely even the most enthusiastic crowd would be growing weary, bored after 6, 8, 10 repetitions? How can anyone sit through an hour or more of the same damn song?? (I am suddenly reminded of Eric Satie’s Vexations.)
John says
Froog: Not sure why you’re getting the “File not found” thing — seems okay here.
(Anybody else have a problem playing it, or the others for that matter???)
Maybe it was different back in the mid-1920s, when the odds of the audience actually getting their hands on a copy of a cast recording were slim. And maybe — which I could believe, if not for the alleged “surprise” of the performance — maybe at least some of the encores were the work of hired shills.
As for the possibly cross-pollinated Ella scatting: beats me. But you come up with the damnedest bits of trivia sometime! (The irreverent mind overspills, indeed.)
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
found myself wondering which “regular” would have triggered this. As for closer to home, no less than two of your connected relatives could have made pulled that trigger: Mom or Me.
BL & Bud’s Wedding Dance,
Mine and BL’s at my wedding to Janice.
Used the Willy version (working without a hitch for me) as our reference for our band (always thought their name was a good one – Cats On a Smooth Surface – as their musical talents happened to be all over the place).
Ella’s scat work, I know I should appreciate but I’ve never been able to completely embrace anyone’s, so this one is lost on me, too.
As an “Outlaw”, maybe Willie is considered ‘subversive’ in other parts and he’s been limited on such servers such as Froog’s. Only slightly kidding.
Froog says
Yes, just a little snippet of it at around 1.42. There are few other such micro-quotations as well, I think, but I can’t catch them all.
Brudder, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to find that Willie is on the blacklist here. During one of the earlier peaks of inanity in the censorship here a few years ago, ‘they’ appeared for a while to be trying to disrupt the distribution of a weekly e-newsletter about upcoming jazz gigs in Beijing.
Froog says
Aha, the Willie version is back! Just a temporary glitch, it seems.
Jayne says
Belle Baker doesn’t look like one too concerned about the orchestra’ now does she? But a picture doesn’t always tell all…
I grew up with Ella on the hi-fi, and this song, especially, with her romping scats and snappy fingers (in my mind, anyway), was one of my favorites. Any other version just doesn’t cut it for me, guys!
Oh, how I enjoyed finding out what’s in the song Blue Skies. And I love Baker’s photo–the hat and hatpin. Wait, is that a hatpin or wrench? :-)
John says
brudder: The regular in question was present to see you dance that dance with BL. However, the regular in question was five or so years in BL & Bud’s own future when they danced to it.
I remember that band, even sorta remember their name, but somehow the “…on a Smooth Surface” doesn’t ring any bells. “Smooth Floor” maybe? or “Smooth Roof”? (Not that I have any chance in the world of remembering their name better than you would!)
Scat-singing: it took me, too, a while to warm up to it. I think what helped the most was realizing how closely it resembles improvisational trumpet or piano solos, say. Song #12 on the RAMH@3 playlist is “Dream a Little Dream,” executed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. They take turns singing solos; while one is singing, the other is in the background, riffing with his or her instrument of choice — that makes the analogy “work” almost by itself. :)
John says
Froog: “micro-quotations” — very nice!
I am both surprised and not surprised that jazz and other “subversive” forms of music have never received official welcome in Communist (or formerly Communist, or nominally Communist) countries. On the one hand, it seems, well, isn’t subversion — overturning the established order — at the heart of cultures founded on revolution? And on the other, I catch myself and think, Oh, right — these aren’t just “Communist” regimes; they’re totalitarian.
Still, labeling them “decadent” or “bourgeois” musical forms (those seem the preferred adjectives) does seem to be stretching the language just a tad too far!
John says
Jayne: Hey, welcome back from vacation!
Very shrewd assessment of that Belle Baker photo. I had several choices of which photo to use; this one seemed optimally to capture the diva spirit of, like, Do you know who I AM?!?
hatpin or wrench? Ha! I thought of it as a spoon. :)
cynth says
Thanks John. I didn’t know all the stuff about Belle Baker, but the music, well, you know. But I recall hearing the story of that first dance between BL and Bud and the song has sentimental overtures for me whenever I hear it.
Never cared much for scat, Ella’s or anyone else’s but boy can she sing! And of course, Goodman’s band at Carnegie Hall no less reminding me of a certain young man skipping school and running off to see him.
This was lovely John, just what I needed.